In the manufacturing process of a semiconductor device or a flat panel display (FPD), a plasma is widely used in a process such as etching, deposit, oxidation, sputtering or the like since it has a good reactivity with a processing gas at a relatively low temperature. In such plasma process, the plasma is mostly generated by a radio frequency (RF) discharge in the megahertz range. Specifically, the plasma generated by the RF discharge is classified into a capacitively coupled plasma and an inductively coupled plasma.
Typically, an inductively coupled plasma processing apparatus includes a processing chamber, at least a portion (e.g., a ceiling portion) of which is formed of a dielectric window; and a coil-shaped RF antenna provided outside the dielectric window, and an RF power is supplied to the RF antenna. The processing chamber serves as a vacuum chamber capable of being depressurized, and a target substrate (e.g., a semiconductor wafer, a glass substrate or the like) to be processed is provided at a central portion of the chamber. Further, a processing gas is introduced into a processing space between the dielectric window and the substrate.
As an RF current flows through the RF antenna, an RF magnetic field is generated around the RF antenna, wherein the magnetic force lines of the RF magnetic field travel through the dielectric window and the processing space. A temporal alteration of the generated RF field causes an electric field to be induced azimuthally. Moreover, electrons azimuthally accelerated by the induced electric field collide with molecules and/or atoms of the processing gas, to thereby ionize the processing gas and generate a plasma in a doughnut shape.
By increasing the size of the processing space in the chamber, the plasma is efficiently diffused in all directions (especially, in the radical direction), thereby making the density of the plasma on the substrate uniform. However, the uniformity of the plasma density on the substrate that is obtained by merely using a typical RF antenna is generally insufficient for the plasma process.
Accordingly, even as for the inductively coupled plasma processing apparatus, it becomes one of the most important factors to improve the uniformity of the plasma density on the substrate and several techniques therefor have been suggested, since it determines the uniformity and the reproducibility of the plasma process itself and, furthermore, the manufacturing production yield.
In a representative conventional technique for improving the uniformity of the plasma density, the RF antenna is divided into a plurality of segments. Such RF antenna dividing method includes a first method for individually supplying RF powers to the respective antenna segments (see, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 5,401,350); and a second method for controlling the division ratio of the RF powers that are divided from one RF power supply to all the antenna segments by changing each impedance of the antenna segments in an additional circuit such as a capacitor or the like (see, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 5,907,221).
In addition, there has been known a method in which a single RF antenna is used and a passive antenna is provided around the RF antenna (see, e.g., Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2005-534150 (JP2005-534150A)). The passive antenna is formed of an independent coil to which an RF power is not supplied from the RF power supply. The passive antenna serves to decrease the intensity of the magnetic field in the loop of the passive antenna compared to that of the magnetic field generated by the RF antenna (inductive antenna) and increase the intensity of the magnetic field outside the loop of the passive antenna. Accordingly, the radial distribution of the RF electromagnetic field in the plasma generating region in the chamber is changed.